Archive for January, 2009

“Why is the motorway culture drearier in Europe than anywhere in America? Perhaps because it is imitative and looks hackneyed and unstylish and ill fitting, the way no European looks quite right in a baseball cap. While the gas stations and industrial parks matched the disposable dreariness of American architecture, set against a French landscape they looked perverse, with Gothic spires and haywains and medieval chalets in the distance, like a violation of an old trust, the compact plowed fields and meadows set off by ugly roads and crash barriers.”

From Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.

Over at Freakonomics, UCLA’s Eric Morris lays out the rational arguments for variable road tolling (a subject that people tend to get pretty irrational about). I wonder if we should drop all reference to pricing/tolls/charges and simply call such things part of the “smart grid” (and there are a lot of interesting comparisons to be drawn between transportation and this emerging concept from the world of energy).

This bit about California’s S.R. 91 caught my eye:

By pricing to keep traffic speeds at 45 m.p.h. or a bit higher, the toll lanes will work with maximum efficiency. They’ll move a lot more cars through than they did when they were congested. During the peak periods on SR 91, the toll lanes handle 40 percent of the traffic despite the fact that they constitute only one-third of the road surface.So the toll lanes will actually ease the burden on the free lanes, hence the benefit even to those who never choose to pay.

Like many of the people I interviewed for Traffic, I too shall be at the Transportation Research Board meetings next week. I’ll be doing an “informal conversation” on Monday evening — a bit like bringing coals to Newcastle, IMHO, but I’m delighted in any case to be at the traffic geek’s paradise that is TRB.

If you’re at TRB, stop by during or after — the details are as follows:

Monday, January 12, 2009, 5:45pm- 7:15pm, Marriott, Salon 3
“Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)”: A
Conversation with Author Tom Vanderbilt Paul P. Jovanis, Pennsylvania
State University, presiding Sponsored by Safety - Section (ANB00)

From a fascinating exchange between Carlo Ratti and Steve Strogatz in the new issue of Seed, I found this bit particularly curious:

“SS: What I’m worried about is exactly what you put your finger on, feedback loops. In the world of dynamical systems, from a mathematical standpoint, feedback loops, especially in complex systems, can be really scary. Because of their unintended consequences. They can create all the beauty and richness in the world around us as well as unforeseen horrors. Just to take a super simple example of what I’m thinking of here, look at the Millennium Bridge in London: one of the world’s thinnest foot bridges and a very elegant structure. All the architects agreed that it was gorgeous, but it looked like it wanted to vibrate, like it was practically a guitar string strung across the Thames River. And on opening day when people walked across the bridge it wobbled a little bit. Which then fed to the people, and made them tend to synchronize their footfalls with the bridge’s motion, which made the bridge’s motion worse. None of this was supposed to happen. This was not built in.”

From the Croydon Guardian:

Andrew Pelling, MP for Central Croydon, was searched by police officers who thought he might be a terrorist, despite him showing his House of Commons pass when they asked for identification.

Mr Pelling had been taking pictures of the cycle lane at the junction of Addiscombe Road and Cherry Orchard Road and said his motive was to highlight the “long-neglected bicycle and pedestrian route”, which had been of concern to his constituents.

A friend writes from Trinidad to alert me that the book had been referred to in yesterday’s Trinidad Guardian, albeit under an unfortunate set of circumstances: The road death of a promising young boxer. The editorial follows:

“Refresh message of road safety

The news of the death of boxer Jizelle Salandy and the injuries sustained by national footballer Tamara Watson only add to a prevailing sense of tragedy on the roads of Trinidad and Tobago. Just a few days before, an automobile crash threatened the careers of two of this country’s track stars, Richard Thompson and Monique Cabral. In the first week of the new year, there are already two fatalities on the books and the loss of Salandy, a young boxer with an unblemished record of wins, is particularly painful. The Arrive Alive campaign has done much to bring the issue of road safety back into public discourse, and to heighten awareness of hot-button issues like drunk driving.

If, however, there is anything at all that a troubled nation can take away from the disturbing news of the last week, it is the need to drive the message of careful and defensive driving deeper into the public psyche. Among its many warnings about crime in Trinidad and Tobago, the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office cautions: “The standard of driving in Trinidad and Tobago is erratic. Road accidents leading to fatalities are a regular occurrence.” On his blog, Tom Vanderbilt, author of the book “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), noted about his visit to Trinidad and Tobago in December, 2008: “According to Thursday’s Trinidad Guardian, in a little box headlined ‘Mr. Death’ showing an image of the Grim Reaper, there have been over 250 (actually 226 at that point) road fatalities this year in T&T.

“By just one comparison, Northern Ireland, which this year had one of its safest years ever, has around 120 fatalities—with a population some 600,000 larger. The reasons are not hard to imagine: There are many two-lane, non-divided highways in the country, which people drive at routinely high speeds (life seems relaxed everywhere except the roads).” The reasons for the high incidence of accidents and road fatalities are well known; a culture that endorses speeding and a lax appreciation of the rules of the road and the lingering machismo of drinking and driving. The tragedy of Jizelle Salandy’s passing and the near misses that have spared Thompson, Cabral and others who have survived mishaps on the road recently, should serve as a caution for the upcoming Carnival season, which will run for potentially dangerous weeks.

While previous efforts at road safety education have been enthusiastic and laudable, real changes in national attitudes to road safety will only come when people start talking to each other about the consequences of dangerous driving behaviour. Those conversations need to begin among young people, the sector of society most likely to be out late at night, driving fast cars and in a state of diminished judgment. Stakeholders interested in minimising risk on the road and Government agencies and ministries with a focus on the young should encourage popular young personalities to make road safety and sound judgment when driving in risky situations part of their conversations with their audiences, colleagues and friends.

Young people with a leadership role in communities, schools and groups should be encouraged to set an example and spread positive word of the value of key safety issues like designated drivers, defensive driving techniques and the need to respect the safety of passengers over matters of ego or style. Through our youth newspaper, GIENetwork, the Guardian stands ready to play our part in delivering a message of safety and due diligence on the road to young people vulnerable to the temptations and enthusiasms of driving during the Carnival season. A reduction in the number of people killed on the nation’s roads requires an all-out national effort that touches everyone in this society, in order to forestall the loss and injury of valuable young lives.”

While I’ll all for the messages of attitudes and personal action in the editorial, there is one other aspect that deserves note, namely this fragment from a Guardian article:

“Frederick said that upon reaching vicinity of the NP overpass at Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, Salandy hit a culvert and smashed head-on into a concrete pillar, dubbed the killer pillar. People who fell victims to that pillar in the past included Ram Kirpalani and chief immigration officer Joseph Bodkyn. Members of the Emergency Health Services (EHS) arrived promptly and pulled out a bloodied Salandy who was still conscious. She was taken to the Port-of-Spain General Hospital, but died around 8.29 am, while undergoing emergency surgery.”

I don’t know the road in question, but under modern safety engineering such an obstruction near a road intended for higher speeds — particularly one that already killed at least two other “boldface” names — would certainly be dealt with some Brifen wire, etc.

Reader Andrew writes: “We have two cars, both with manual transmissions and have two teenage daughters that had little choice but to learn how to drive with the stick shift. There was some grumbling from the teenagers and some specific concerns from my wife about how the clutch might survive. But in the end, they both learned how to drive stick and I think they are safer drivers because of the manual transmission. This is extension of one of your main points of the book — the more driving-related things that demand your attention, the more carefully you drive. You learn to pay much more attention to the car itself through awareness of RPMs (both through the gauge and aurally).”

Andrew’s comments struck a chord, because while researching the book I had looked in vain for some definitive answer to the whole manual/automatic debate. Indeed, my editor, a manual advocate, had egged me on in this regard. But alas, it seems to be one of those enduring “mysteries” of driving, beyond easy research (if anyone knows of anything please advise). John Groeger, author of Understanding Driving has done some cognitive psychology work on “automatic” behaviors, like shifting — his argument was that any task, however, seemingly minor, is never purely automatic.

There are arguments both ways. As Andrew suggests, shifting provides a better sense of engagement with the vehicle and feedback with the road and driving environment (it has also, of course, been more fuel efficient, though the gulf seems to be disappearing). The very necessity of shifting would seemingly prevent the driver from engaging in as many non-driving tasks (though I’ve talked to many people who say that’s simply not the case, citing people quite regularly talk on a hand-held cell phone while shifting with one hand and simply not gripping the steering wheel for a moment). On the other hand, if every action like shifting requires cognitive workload, then stripping out the task of repetitive shifting would seemingly free resources, leaving the driver with spare capacity to look out for hazards, etc. (in an ideal world, mind you).

I tend to instinctively side with the manual shifters — on the idea that a more engaged driver is a better driver — though, ironically, I drive an automatic. So maybe it’s a moot debate. As to which is safer, I suspect it all comes down to the individual driver more than the shifting system. Many European countries where manual shifting is still more prevalent do have superior traffic safety records to the U.S., but there are so many differing variables (driver demographics, driving environment, etc.) that it would be well-nigh impossible to sift out shifting as any kind of prime mover. Even looking at crash records of manual versus automatic cars would be murky (e.g., do different types of people drive each type of car, are they driven in different sorts of places, are the types of cars in each case similar, etc.). So I remain on the sidelines. How do you all feel out there? Any militant manual trans types? Any automatic partisans? Anyone know of any real research?

Hanoi has been seeing fewer motorcycle deaths and injuries since its mandatory helmet law went into effect last year. This BBC dispatch from Nigeria, however, notes some of the challenges at work in getting the country’s unorganized moto-taxi drivers (and passengers) to similarly don headgear. Helmets are costly, and passengers often steal them. In response, some drivers have been wearing dried pumpkins as a ruse.

Kano Federal Road Safety Commission commander Yusuf Garba told the BBC they were taking a hard line with people found using the improvised helmets.

“We are impounding their bikes and want to take them to court so they can explain why they think wearing a calabash is good enough for their safety,” he said.

There is a curious additional dynamic: magical thinking.

Stories have also appeared in the local papers highlighting passengers’ fears that the helmets could be used by motorcyclists to cast spells on their clients, making it easy for them to be robbed.

“Some people can put juju inside the helmets and when they are worn the victim can either lose consciousness or be struck dumb,” passenger Kolawole Aremu told the Daily Trust newspaper.

This sounds absurd, but perhaps no more so than other forms of magical thinking when it comes to traffic safety: I’m driving on a quiet country road so I don’t need a seat-belt, drinking makes me a more cautious driver, etc.

Not to turn this space into the NY Times’ “Metropolitan Diary” or anything, but I had a curious and gratifying moment yesterday. I’m currently in Sanibel Island, Florida, where my biggest traffic concern is generally trying to figure out if the thing I can see in the dead tree to my distant left as I drive is a peregrine falcon or a red-shouldered hawk. In any case, at the local bookstore I saw a flyer announcing a pickup-soccer game the following morning (the guy announced he needed a break from “family time”). Being a soccer nut and definitely suffering withdrawal symptoms, I resolved to attend. It turned out I was the only one who did, apart from the three early twenty-something guys hosting it. After an intense first-half of two-on-two, we were chatting in the shade. We were talking about what we did, and I mentioned Traffic, then preparing myself to make the explanatory pitch… Before I could, however, one of the three, Scott, perked up and said “you wrote Traffic?” Not only had he bought and read the book on a plane, but apparently a friend had bought it for him as well (was there ever more rapturous music to a writer’s ears?) We talked for a while about Boston drivers and such, then played a bit longer in the noonday heat, then went our separate ways. I think it was a draw, by the way.

As I note in Traffic, sitting in the backseat offers a more substantial benefit than front-seat airbags. A piece in Japan’s Daily Yomiuri notes how much safer still that becomes when backseat passengers are belted:

“The number of road traffic deaths in 2008 decreased by 10.3 percent from 2007. The dramatic decrease is partly due to the increased rate of passengers in backseats wearing seat belts, the NPA said.

If most of backseat passengers wear seat belts, the annual number of road traffic deaths will decrease below 5,000,” an NPA senior official said.”

From the delightful “automobile touring game” chronicled over at things magazine.

“Apart from the obvious problems of traffic and transportation, the growth created other confusing complications. Today, out of the city’s eighty-five thousand streets, there are about eight hundred fifty called Juarez, seven hundred fifty named Hidalgo, and seven hundred known as Morelos. Two hundred are called 16 de Septiembre, while a hundred more are 16 de Septiembre Avenue, Alley, Mews, or Extension.”

That’s a snippet from David Lida’s First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, Capital of the 21st Century. I have been to the city many times — and on the most recent trip was delighted by the car-free Sundays program in the center — but this book deepened my knowledge and appreciation.

A few interesting traffic-related things that caught my eye over the holiday break…

“Between 1960 and 2002, the average weight of Americans increased an astonishing 24 pounds. The scientists only looked at passenger vehicle travel, and used 2003 statistics to determine how many people travelled and for what distances. They calculated that it took no less than 938 million gallons of gasoline to carry around the extra weight, compared to what it would have taken if people weighed what they did in 1960.” (Spacing Toronto).

Thai traffic cops forced to wear smile masks, reports the New York Times. “The new cloth masks, which hook behind the ears and cover the mouth and nose, will help “reduce the stress from drivers when they see the police,” said Mr. Somyos, the highway police commander.

Relatedly, a new study finds, perhaps not surprisingly, a link between the obesity of nations and their rates of cycling and walking. “Based on transportation data from 2000, Europeans walked an average of 382 kilometers per person a year compared to Americans at 140 kilometers a year. They also bicycled more, 188 kilometers a year to 40 kilometers a year for Americans… Health data in 2002 showed that the U.S., at 23.9 percent, had the highest rate of obesity of any country in the study. Switzerland had the lowest at 8 percent while the Netherlands had 8.1 percent and Sweden had 9.4 percent. These statistics are based on health interview surveys that rely on self-report of height and weight.”

The New York Times calls for a higher fuel tax, while David Levinson considers what to do as the revenue from a gas tax dries up.

No Wonder They Call It “No Park Slope”: “In the survey, the average length of residents’ searches for parking was 27 minutes, though a lucky 40 percent said they found parking in 10 minutes or less.” Via the New York Times.

One in Three Drivers Given Wrong Directions by GPS (One-Quarter Have Chucked Their Road Atlases).

Ford goes for the Prius Effect: “”The main question hybrid drivers had was, ‘How do I know I’m getting the most out of my hybrid,’” said Jeff Greenberg, Ford senior technical leader. “We needed to create a system that better communicates with drivers and gives them the tools to maximize fuel efficiency. That’s what SmartGauge with EcoGuide does.” Via the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Los Angeles Times parses the finer points of the state’s new ban on texting-while-driving. Indiana, meanwhile, mulls a ban, but bizarrely only for drivers younger than 18 (you’d arguably save more lives by simply banning drivers under 18)

Are appletinis making the road less safe?

Even as traffic fatalities overall decline, a new record is set for law enforcement officials killed on the road.

The “How’s My Driving” sticker idea spreads (via Road King).